Electricity prices in all 50 states

How to read this state table

Each row represents one of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia. The residential, commercial, and industrial columns show the most recent annual average retail electricity price by sector, computed as total revenue divided by total kilowatt-hours sold and rounded to the nearest tenth of a cent. Sector definitions follow the U.S. Energy Information Administration: residential covers single-family homes and apartments; commercial covers offices, retail, and small institutional buyers; industrial covers large-load manufacturing, mining, and similar high-throughput operations. The averages are computed by EIA from monthly Form 861 utility filings and represent revenue divided by sales for each sector and state, then averaged over the calendar year.

Because residential customers carry a heavier per-kWh cost than industrial buyers in most jurisdictions, the residential column is the most useful single proxy for what a household will actually pay. States with abundant hydropower, federal-priced low-cost generation, or a deregulated wholesale market with surplus capacity tend to sit near the bottom of the residential column. States with isolated grids (Hawaii, Alaska), heavy transmission build-out, or wildfire and storm-recovery surcharges tend to sit near the top. The commercial column tracks closely with residential because both serve distribution-network customers who bear similar transmission and distribution costs. The industrial column diverges sharply because large-load buyers can negotiate special tariffs, transmission service agreements, and interruptible-load contracts that significantly reduce their per-kWh cost.

The price spread between sectors is itself informative. A state where residential prices are roughly 1.5 to 2 times the industrial price reflects a typical rate structure where fixed costs are spread across kilowatt-hours and small customers bear a larger share per unit. A state where the spread is much wider often signals heavy cross-subsidy from residential to industrial customers, frequently driven by economic-development tariffs. A state where the spread is unusually narrow may reflect either a small industrial base or an unusual rate structure that exposes industrial buyers to costs typically borne by smaller customers.

For a deeper read, click any state name to view its multi-year price history, generation mix, and sector-by-sector breakdown. The rankings page sorts the same data by single dimensions (cheapest residential, most renewable, highest consumption), and the trends page shows how each state's rates have moved year-over-year. Read our methodology for how we compute averages and what's excluded from each sector total. RateWatt does not modify EIA values; we present them in a comparable format with explicit source attribution on every page so you can verify any figure against the original federal filing.

A few caveats. First, statewide averages mask significant within-state variation between urban and rural service territories, between investor-owned utilities and rural cooperatives, and between time-of-use rates and flat tariffs. Second, the residential price reported here includes distribution charges and customer-service fees but does NOT include separately itemized line items like solar net-metering credits, low-income subsidies, or fuel-adjustment surcharges that may appear on individual bills. Third, reporting lags: EIA typically releases final annual figures with a 12-month delay, so the most recent year shown may still be subject to minor revisions in subsequent EIA updates. Fourth, generation-mix shares reported elsewhere in RateWatt cover utility-scale generation only and may under-count rooftop solar, behind-the-meter storage, and small distributed generation in states with substantial residential-PV adoption.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity (Form 861, State Electricity Profiles).